Jesus is King

the son has risen in the west

"What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind?”

The Nazarene knew.

That day when I sat with him in the main service he drew pictures of super heroes holding the severed heads of their enemies (and friends) on the offering envelopes and passed them to me with expressionless stealth. Folded carefully with the words DO NOT OPEN written across one side, the notes were portals to other worlds…I unfolded the first drawing. It was Batman holding a double sided axe (the widow maker). Blood dripped from one side of the axe. In Batman’s other hand was the recently detached head of his crime busting partner Robin. Still masked. All done in pencil using the Hymnal from the pew rack in front of us as a solid surface for drawing. The absurdity of what he was doing pushed the laughter out of me. Fits and stifles. I think I was able to take in 3 separate drawings before my mother calmly made her way from the choir loft where she sat behind the minister to insert herself between me and the new friend at my side to intervene and save me from folly.

Kanye has released another album. “Jesus is King”. I’ve listened to it a lot. It makes me remember my young self. The religious fervor and solitary certainty. Before smart phones and open source lectures on YouTube. I sort of love the album for this reason alone. It makes me wonder a little bit which one of us is late to the party.

The album is unmistakably Kanye. Horns, choirs, sick beats and some terrible singing (but of course he makes it work) combine for a very enjoyable gospel music record. If you’re “in the light”, its time to say hallelujah. If you’re not you still gotta give the man props. Kanye is what we want from our artists. The amplified version of our suspicions and gut feelings. The magnification of glimpses… Twitter thinks he has changed. I’m not so sure though. For me he is what he has always been. Hubris with style. The white tailored suit (with sweet kicks). The pink polo. The “my life is dope, so I do dope shit” Kanye. He’s still in there. Its just that now his private jet is full of people harmonizing scripture instead of scantily clad ladies and champagne. A variation on form for sure and maybe it’s for the better but he is still the artist. Now he just happens to be a Christian. Its fine. The overall message of the beginning of the album seems to be DO NOT ARGUE WITH YOUR FATHER. Heavenly or otherwise. Also, Chic-fil-a is a family restaurant that upholds the basic values we should all be striving to preserve. Ok… That’s also fine I guess. The real banger award on this album for me though has to be pinned to track 10 “Use This Gospel”. It features a single note piano drone and the skills of none other than the legendary soprano sax crusher himself Kenny G. From the first note the listener is invited on a tour of the Himalayas (peaks only) and when the beat finally drops (and the listener awakens from formless conscious awareness) the song is transmuted into pure gold. Midas has done his work. The album could have been left there but Kanye has one more thing to say. If it were me I would have left it there honestly. He made a pretty bold statement with the 10 tracks, but just in case anyone missed his point he added 49 more seconds. Just long enough to remind all the haters and critics. All the people of other faiths. All the people who don’t get the concept of substitutionary atonement. All the people who don’t know about the jackboots of God. That at the end of the day, or rather at the end of all days a confession will be drawn from your lips. Jesus. Is. Lord. 

Hollywood's Bleeding

The back of his neck looked like an aerial picture I had seen of the Mississippi delta. I wondered how a persons neck could get to look like that. It wasn't just that the skin was wrinkled. It was also discolored in odd ways. The lines looked carved and the texture was leathery. The mans neck told a story. Probably some ball games. Time in a yard on a tractor smoking a pipe. Maybe a few fights. Definitely many years doing some job somewhere. Nothing remarkable. The sun certainly played a major role in the story. The sun may actually have been the main character. This guys neck was just one thing in a sea of things that the sun had baked. My eyes drifted downward to the stack of tiny plastic communion cups placed into the... well whatever that thing is, that is made to hold the cups, right next to where the pencils and prayer cards go, right next to the baptist hymnal, right next to the holy bible itself. Gods word. The dudes ears were a little too big for his head. Thats what I remember really. 

I put the mirror that I had been using to stare at the back of my own head with down on a pile of cords from a left out hair dryer and makeup and pieces of floss. The bathroom counter is a mess.

As I leave the bathroom I get my fake earpods and put on the new Post Malone album. It is my 7th time listening to it from the beginning. I choose to listen to the “Posty's Universe” version on Spotify so that I can hear him talk about some of the songs while marveling at his face tattoos in the video clips. I'm struck by how disarmingly genuine he comes off in his monologues. There doesn't seem to be anything contrived about him. Even the playboy bunny tattooed next to his right eye seems genuine.

Hollywood's Bleeding is the 24 year olds third album. Its pop. Its hip hop. Its rock. Its Motown. The lyrics are simple and observational. Every song has a hard hook. The album is sweet and hopeful (“flossy” in the words of the man himself). Its also a devastating lament. He sings about insta-love and the internet. He says what we all feel here in the west. There's too much, “the world has gone to shit and we all know that”. The album moves me to stare at nothing for what seems to be an eternity.

“I want you out of my head, I want you out of my bedroom tonight, theres no way I can save you, cause I need to be saved too”.

The track “myself” starts playing. As I listen this song becomes the fulcrum of the album for me. It is the part where the artist Post Malone becomes the conduit of something collectively felt. He sings

“Its what it is, its how I live, all the places I've been
I wish I could have been there myself
I made so much, spent so much, but I can't get enough
I wish I could have been there myself”

Its a song about us. How disconnected we are from the experiences we are “having”. Much like Solomon from the Old Testament, Post has denied himself nothing in the way of pleasure and accumulation and has discovered in the empty aftermath the absurd gem of existential longing.

“all of this American dreaming, everybody's sick of believing, lets not give a fuck, till giving a fuck has no meaning”.

Perhaps the most profound aspect of the song is how it refuses to resolve. The ghost hangs. This is in part the power of the whole record. Its not getting at anything. It has no perceivable agenda and like the artist himself is simply a reflection of what is happening. Floss and all.